


Boats, but Not the Ocean

by p1013



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Blow Jobs, Groundhog Day, Hand Jobs, Hermione Granger & Draco Malfoy Friendship, LCDrarry, Little bit of angst for flavor, M/M, Mild Horror, Minor Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, POV Draco Malfoy, Romantic Comedy, Time Loop, Very minor mention of suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-02-22 23:23:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23002066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/p1013/pseuds/p1013
Summary: If Draco ever gets his hands on this Bill Murray character, he's going to kill him.---TheGroundhog Dayfic no one asked for but I wrote anyway.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 119
Kudos: 768
Collections: Lights Camera Drarry 2020





	Boats, but Not the Ocean

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven't seen _Groundhog Day_ , all you need to know is that Bill Murray's character has to fall in love with someone he hates.
> 
> Huge thanks to my betas Tacky and Lis for all of their help with this fic.

He finds the video in a dusty box in his parent's attic. He's not up there looking for it, but while he puts his school books away, he literally trips over it. Scrawled on the side in thick, black marker is "JUSTIN'S THINGS," and because it's easy and normal—there's no memory of war trapped under the overlapping cardboard lid—he opens it and starts digging through.

Hours later, curled up on his couch with an empty bag of microwave popcorn and Bill Murray talking about the weather, a thought occurs to him, then he starts laughing so hard, he can't breathe.

What if...

* * *

Draco has a routine. He wakes up every morning at precisely 5:30 AM. He brushes his teeth, gets dressed for work at the Ministry, has a light breakfast of toast and tea, and is out the door by six. It takes ten minutes to walk to the nearest Apparition Point, then another five minutes to walk to the Ministry's entrance. The Archives and Research Department, located in the bowels of the main building and tucked behind the cleaner's closets, is another ten minutes from there. It's almost always empty this time of the morning, though. And while it means he has to brew the coffee the rest of the department insists on drinking, it also means that he has peace and quiet for a solid hour before anyone can even think about ruining his day. 

His office, cluttered with bookshelves and filing cabinets and his desk—which is honestly too big for the space but too perfect for the way he works, with its wide, unadorned top and its many deep drawers with plenty of space for things to get lost in—is a safe haven from the rest of the Ministry, which Draco still dislikes. Though that emotion has faded over the years from outright antagonism to an apathy that lets him do his job, more or less, well. The people who need to find him know where he is, and the people who _don't_ don't bother looking. It's much easier to send an owl than come trudging through the basement levels of the Ministry, only to be sneered at to go away and told the information would be sent later that day.

Which it is. He's not here to make enemies, after all. Not new ones, anyway.

He is left alone, but still needed. He is comfortable, but not stuck in a rut. Life is exactly the way he likes it.

That is, of course, why he fails to notice that something is amiss until lunch.

"Draco."

Startled, he nearly drops the thick tome— _A Thorough Classification of the Practical Applications of Monkshood—_ he's been studying for the last week.

Luna Lovegood, her blonde head wreathed in a fine tracery of golden leaves and vines that slowly transform into curse words in various languages, is leaning in his door frame.

"What is it?"

"The others wanted to know if you'd like to get lunch. We're going to the pub."

He frowns. "Didn't you go yesterday?"

"No. Maybe a different Luna did?"

She never makes sense, so he brushes her question off. "No, thank you. I need to get this research up to the Aurors before they come looking for it."

"Of course. We wouldn't want them to realize where you're hiding out. But are you sure?" She grins with pure mischief. "Harry will be there."

Draco fights to keep his expression perfectly neutral, but something must slip because Luna laughs, the sound high and delighted like amused bells.

"See you later, then." She disappears from the doorway, then pops back in, grinning. "I'll tell Harry you said hello."

He flips off her retreating back and catches a flash of gold as her circlet returns the gesture.

He finishes his notes, then puts them into a tidy bundle in his top drawer, ready to send upstairs in the morning. With little else to do, he spends the rest of the day pretending to work on requests from Weasley and Potter while actually losing them in the piles of paperwork that litter his office. It's a familiar past time, and if he maybe focuses more on Potter's requests than Weasley's, that's between him and the filing system. There's some commotion at the end of the day, a fracas on the second floor that he avoids on his way out, but otherwise, the day is unremarkable.

It's when Luna asks him to lunch again the next day that he starts to catch on.

"You never ask me to lunch three days in a row," he says, suspicious. "What are you planning?"

"I haven't asked you three days in a row, though." Luna reaches into her pocket and pulls out her Spectrespecs, popping them on and coming into Draco's office to lean in close to his face. He tips backwards in his chair, trying to keep a respectable distance between them, but when Luna starts climbing onto the top of his desk, scattering papers willy-nilly, he relents.

"Something is odd about you today," she says quietly, her face so close to his he can feel her words as well as hear them. "Perhaps you should go home and rest. The wrackspurts are rather abundant this time of year."

"Yes," he says, fiercely biting back the instinct to question which of the two of them is more odd at the moment. "Of course. How could I forget the wrackspurts?"

"Indeed." She settles back on the floor, brushing papers from her robes. "Do you still want to come for lunch?"

"No. Perhaps another time. I think I might leave a bit early. The wrackspurts, you understand."

"Of course, of course." She frowns, looking serious as her headwear tells him to piss off in French. "Do take care of yourself."

"Absolutely."

As soon as she leaves, he gets up and locks the door, glancing around his office for anything out of place. He wrenches open the top drawer of his desk. The tidy bundle he'd put together the day before is gone. After shuffling around papers, he finds the start of it tucked under _A Thorough Classification_ , and he falls into his chair, confused and annoyed, with his heart pounding.

Warily, he peeks his head out of his office. The hallway leading to the front of the department is empty, so he grabs his wand—he's not paranoid, really, but it pays to be well-armed in uncertain situations—and goes to the front counter.

The Archives and Research Department faces out onto one of the main hallways in the Ministry's basement. A long counter with a handful of bored interns, it's the main interface for anyone in the Ministry looking for information they're too busy to find themselves. One of the said bored interns, a young man whose name Draco hasn't bothered to learn yet, has his chin resting in his hand, arm leaning on the counter, his wand waving idly in the air as he creates tiny figures that wrestle around on the counter to his apathetic amusement.

"You," Draco says, startling the young man (and the wrestlers). "What day is it?"

Eyes wide, he sits up, wand slammed onto the counter with enough strength that Draco's surprised it doesn't snap. The wrestlers flinch. "Wednesday?"

Draco glares. "Are you sure about that?"

"I… Yes?" The man's voice cracks, and he winces.

Draco feels a headache coming on. Not sure why he bothered talking to the idiot in the first place, he casts a _Diei Ostendere_ charm, and frowns at the glowing blue letters proclaiming that it is, indeed, Wednesday, the 14th of March, 2001.

Which was yesterday.

He heads back to his office, the intern looking significantly less bored but very much confused, and slams the door.

He casts again and again. _Lumos_ and _Aguamenti_ and _Alohamora_. Small charms and large ones. He transfigures his chair into a couch, then a table, then back again, his magic singing in his veins and nothing seemingly out of place. He tests his wand for jinxes and hexes and curses, but all of his diagnostics come back clean.

So why in the hell is his wand telling him today is yesterday?

Still trying to work out the puzzle, head aching fiercely, Draco leaves work early and settles down at home with an overfilled glass of wine and a good book, putting it all down to stress or overexertion or bloody wrackspurts. He falls asleep in front of the fire, wine glass forgotten on the side table beside him.

He wakes up the next morning in his bed.

Sheets tangled around his legs, he stumbles down the hallway to his front room. The glass is gone, as is any sign of the fire he'd lit the night before. The kitchen is equally empty. No dirty dishes in the sink, no half-forgotten post on the counter. Hand shaking, he casts _Diei Ostendere_ again and stares in disbelief.

Wednesday, the 14th of March, 2001.

* * *

Draco has spent the last three years as a research professional. His entire adult life has been wrapped up in looking for obscure pieces of information, forgotten spells, and misplaced knowledge. So, when he comes up completely empty-handed, white-blond hair disheveled and covered in cobwebs, his office a mess of record catalogues and indexes, his coworkers not-so-discreetly avoiding him, he goes to the only other person in the Ministry he'd trust to know something no one else does.

The Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures is uncomfortably quiet as he walks down the line of desks that make up most of the annoyingly open concept space. The witches and wizards seated there have their eyes so focused on their work, Draco can hear their eyeballs straining. No one looks up. No one, except the person he's here to see.

"Granger."

She raises an eyebrow. "Malfoy."

"Do you have a moment?"

"I might."

"Wonderful. If you'd come with me?"

She frowns but stands anyway. "Is this something I should be worried about?"

"Perhaps, perhaps not. I promise I won't hex you, if that's your concern."

Her smile is quick and genuine. "I've got my right hook, should it come to that."

"Wonderful. As I recall, it's quite good."

"Quite."

If circumstances were any different, if Draco wasn't already half convinced that he'd lost his mind somewhere between his flat and the Ministry two days ago, he'd smile. While he'd never claim that he and Granger are friends, he has to admit that they aren't exactly enemies, either.

She ushers him inside a private room nearby that the department uses for interviews, then closes the door softly. "Would you like to tell me what, exactly, managed to drag you out of your lair?"

"I don't have a lair," he says as he sits in one of the chairs gathered around a conference table, hands resting in his lap with his wand clasped between his fingers. "I have an office."

"It's a lair, and you're avoiding my question."

"Yes." He fiddles with his wand for a moment, then casts the date charm. "Is that today's date?"

Hermione frowns. "Yes. Is this a trick or something? You certainly didn't need to come all the way up here to confirm the date. You clearly know the spell for it."

"I seem to have a problem." He coughs before canceling the spell. "Every day is March 14th."

"What." Her voice is flat, her expression as blank as it's ever been around Draco. He doesn't know why he misses the hint of annoyed fondness that's usually there.

"Yesterday was March 14th, and the day before that was March 14th. And today,"—he gestures towards the air where the spell used to be—"is also March 14th."

"Yesterday was the 13th, Malfoy."

"For you, maybe, but not for me."

She frowns at him, then starts to laugh. Her body bends over the table in the middle of the room, her face pressed against the tabletop, her laughter far from muffled. Draco waits for her to compose herself, but it takes an inordinately long time. He's about ready to get up and storm out when she sucks in a long, deep breath, and looks up at him from behind the waterfall of her hair.

"Are you trying to take the piss, Malfoy? Really? You want me to believe you're living out the plot of _Groundhog Day_?"

"The plot of what?"

" _Groundhog Day._ "

He blinks and reconsiders leaving.

"It's a movie," she tries again. "A Muggle one, so I'm surprised you'd know of it." The laughter in her eyes fades, replaced with a cautious worry. "Actually, I'd be more surprised if you _had_ heard of it. Do you know what it is?"

"No," he bites out.

"Wonderful." Her smile disappears. There's a long pause, and then she sighs. "Why don't you start at the beginning?"

He fills her in, leaving out the bit about not noticing his life was on repeat for almost three days, and watches as her face grows more and more serious.

"You're caught in a time loop."

"Seems like."

Biting her lip, she leans back in her chair, arms crossed. "Well, I'm afraid I don't have much experience with time loops. Time _travel_ , yes, but not loops. A Time-Turner is only able to make limited leaps in time, and it doesn't change anything that's happened before. Time is, after all, a constant. All we can do with our magic is go to different points on that constant line." She flushes, realizing she's lost the thread of the conversation. "Has anything out of the ordinary happened recently?" At his frown, she rolls her eyes. "Other than the loop itself, of course."

"No." He pauses, reconsiders. "Well, now that you mention it… Do you remember Finch-Fletchley?"

"Justin." Hermione nods. "Of course."

"He visited the department earlier this week. And perhaps more strangely than someone who doesn't work for the Ministry going to the trouble to walk to the Archives, he asked for _me_ , specifically, though I don't think we exchanged pleasant words with each other even once before." Draco frowns. "I was out when he came by, though. He left a note, said he'd come back tomorrow, on the 15th."

"Which is never going to happen."

"Which is never…" Draco looks at Hermione for a long moment. "You don't think..."

"He is Muggle-born," she says hesitantly. "And he did dislike you quite a bit."

"That could be said of at least half of our class at Hogwarts, Granger. Yourself included."

She waves his comment away. "You're all right, now that you're not under your father's thumb. I don't remember Justin being particularly adept at charms, though. You'd have to be a superior caster to be able to trap someone in a time loop. I mean, the magic around a Time-Turner is extraordinary. I can't imagine what it would take to create something like that, and on a significantly larger scale. And to reset everything at a predetermined moment along the timeline, before bringing everything within the confines of the spell back to the same starting point, without there being any sort of lingering sign of time's passing or a memory—"

"Granger," Draco says, interrupting her train of thought. "As much as I'd love to discuss the ins and outs of this particular spell, I'd much rather figure out how to bloody counter it. I do not want to live March 14th ad infinitum."

"Of course, of course. What have you found so far?"

"Well," he says slowly, "I've found that I'm reliving the same day, that there are no records of a spell that would cause such a thing to happen, and my only other resource seems to think I'm trapped in a Muggle film."

"Oh."

"Yes, _oh_."

She bites her lip again, looking uncertain. "I'll have to do some research, but I doubt I'll have anything useful by the end of today. And"—she glances at him, wary and apologetic at the same time—"if you really _are_ in a time loop, I won't remember any of this come morning."

"No."

They fall silent, staring at each other over the scarred table top. Draco can't tell if he wants to fidget under her quiet scrutiny or start throwing things. But acting like a child is unlikely to get him out of this mess, so, instead, he sighs.

"What was the name of that movie again?"

* * *

He has to have Granger come with him to the video rental store, and then to a pawn's broker—though they don't seem to sell anything resembling chess pieces there—to get a vee-dee-o and tee-vee to play the thing. There's some confusion when he puts it in at first, Hermione muttering about inconsiderate people not rewinding things, but then loud music and images of clouds start racing across the screen. Eyes wide, he sits down and watches, trying to absorb what, exactly, he's seeing.

By the end of the film, he's almost thankful he's in a time loop because it means he'll get those hours of his life back.

"But Draco," Hermione protests as he pushes her out of his apartment.

"But nothing, Granger. That was a waste of time, and now, I need to think about what I'm going to do _tomorrow_ when I go back to square one."

"You aren't at square one." She twists her body in a quick move that has her out of Draco's grasp and back into his apartment before he realizes what's happening. "You know how to break the spell."

"I do not." He takes a step towards her, and she holds a hand up, eyebrows raised as if in threat. "I know that you enjoy terrible movies."

"It's not a terrible movie." She frowns. "And stop trying to change the subject. Phil broke the loop by getting Rita to fall in love with him. All you have to do is get someone to fall in love with you, too."

He glares at her. "Wrong. He had that chipmunk woman eating out of the palm of his hand, and it didn't break the loop. It _had_ to be Rita, no one else was going to do it."

"Then you have to find the right person."

"Someone whom I hate."

"And who hates you, probably."

"Granger"—he rubs at the bridge of his nose—"that could be any number of people."

"Could it really?" Her expression is wary, as if she's waiting for him to catch up with something that should be obvious.

When it hits, it's like lightning, and he hates the parallelism.

"You're mad." He points to the still open door. "And I would like to get some sleep. Please."

"But Malfoy—"

"Good evening."

Shoulders slumped and eyes rolling, she steps into the hallway. But as she walks through the doorway, she turns and opens her mouth one more time.

He slams the door shut before she can speak, locking it with a vicious twist of his wrist.

Glaring at the tee-vee and the jaunty tune playing from its speakers, he crosses his arms and does his best not to pout.

But, of course, he is a researcher, and if there's nothing more to be done tonight—he hadn't noticed the sun going down, but the streetlights are on outside and the sky is black and dotted with stars—he might as well research.

He changes into his pyjamas, settles in front of the tee-vee, and watches the movie again.

And again.

And again.

By the time he stumbles to bed, eyes heavy and aching from the bright light of the screen, he knows what he has to do, even if it does mean that Granger is right.

* * *

The next (same? This is going to get bloody confusing) morning, Draco wakes up at 5:30 AM. He brushes his teeth, gets dressed for work at the Ministry, has a light breakfast of toast and tea, and is out the door by 6. Twenty minutes later, he is digging through the piles of information requests cluttering his desk, sorting through the detritus until he has a small pile next to him, one name slashed boldly across the bottom signature line on each page.

It doesn't take him long to find everything. None of the requests are particularly tasking. He knows he's been putting them off to be petty and, maybe, a little mean, but he also knew that he'd be able to find whatever the form was asking for without much trouble, should anyone come skulking into the basement, threatening bodily harm.

With a smart bundle of papers tucked under his arm, he steps out of the Archives and Research Department and makes his way toward the Auror's offices. He sets the packet of papers onto Potter's desk with a quiet smack, then pulls up a chair and sits.

Potter, true to form, startles brilliantly. His green eyes are wide behind his slightly skewed glasses, hair an absolute disheveled mess. He's not wearing his Auror robes—they're tossed haphazardly over the back of his chair, like a _jacket_ , the man's professional decorum is beyond the pale—but his dark blue jumper clings to well-muscled shoulders and a broad chest that rises and falls with each breath. It's a lovely shade, drawing out the richness of Potter's skin and the startling vibrancy of his eyes. Draco's eyes dip lower, trailing along the line of Potter's jaw and the arch of his neck, wondering what might be beneath the soft fabric spread across the expanse of muscle…

But then he realizes he hasn't said anything for a good thirty seconds, and Potter's coming out of his stupor, and he pulls his eyes back to Potter's very ordinary and not at all attractive face, hoping he hasn't given anything away.

Not that it matters. Maybe there are _some_ benefits to this thing.

"Malfoy?" Potter asks as he rights his glasses. "The hell are you doing here?"

"You sent down some information requests," he says, placing his hand on top of the neatly wrapped pile. "I have the information."

"Oh, brilliant." Potter pulls the stack from beneath Draco's fingers, the quick slide of paper against his hand making his skin tingle. "Thanks."

He pushes his glasses back up his nose, then peers down at the sheets. Flipping through them idly, he starts to frown.

"What the hell? This is six months old," he says quietly, and Draco coughs.

Potter jumps again. "What're you still doing here?"

"I wanted to know if you'd like to get a drink later."

You'd think Draco had tried to _Crucio_ the man (again). His face goes pale, mouth slack-jawed, and his glasses slip down his nose with such a slow, steady motion that Draco thinks someone's spelled them to fall off.

"What."

Draco really hates March 14th.

"A drink, Pot— _Harry_. With me. After work."

"Harry?" Potter puts the pile of paper onto his desk and pushes back his chair carefully. His hand dips towards his hip and the wand he has holstered there. "Okay, what's going on, Malfoy? What's wrong?"

"Nothing is wrong," he says, forcing a smile to his face that makes his teeth grind together. "I'm just asking if you'd like to get a drink after work. You are welcome to say no."

He isn't.

"No."

Damnation.

"Look, P—Harry—"

"There it is again."

"Shut your mouth. I have very little patience this morning, so if you don't want to get a drink with me today—"

"I don't."

" _If you don't want to get a drink with me today_ "—he can hear his teeth cracking, his jaw is clenched so tight—"then perhaps we can do lunch instead?"

Potter stands up, glancing around the bullpen with worry etched on his stupid face. "Something is wrong. I need to find Hermione, she always knows what to do."

"Listen, you idiot," Draco says, jumping to his feet, "I'm going to take you on a date, and we're going to have a lovely time, and so help me, if you don't fall in love with me, I will hex you into next week. Now, let's get a drink."

Which is how Draco ends up in custody for threatening an Auror and sexual harassment of Ministry employee. When he wakes up the next day in his own bed, rather than a prison cell, he's only a little relieved.

* * *

He calls in sick to work for the first time in three years. His supervisor nearly makes a Mediwizard check in on him, but Draco calms her rattled nerves and lets her know about the many requests from Potter he has laying around his office. She perks up at the news, tells him she'll get right on that for him, no need to risk his health, after all, and then her face disappears from the Floo, and Draco can breathe a bit.

He'd been pretty sure, when he tumbled into bed two days before, that the trick of _Groundhog Day_ was that the insufferable weatherman had made the woman with the odd teeth and absolutely _massive_ hair fall in love with him in the course of a day. Phil—and what an awful name; honestly, Muggles have no imagination when it comes to these things—had learned how to be less of a selfish arsehole through trial and error and a literal infinite amount of time, and somehow, that worked for the woman.

Now, Draco is the last person to think of himself as perfect. He's well aware that he's a little standoffish, that he tends to be a bit overly posh, and that he likes to spread out over the entire mattress like Devil's Snare when he sleeps. But he's gotten _better_ since he passed his NEWTs. He's put effort into being a better person, into making amends for the things he'd done during the War and before. For Salazar's sake, he and Hermione Granger are bloody almost-friends!

And he already knows how to play the fucking piano.

Groaning, he sprawls out on his couch, his arm thrown over his eyes while he tries desperately to think. While he literally has all the time in the world, he doesn't want to waste it. Granger was right; there's no way this spell is stable long-term, and Draco doesn't want to think about the possible repercussions of it dragging out indefinitely. He _has_ to figure this out, and fast.

He goes back to the pawn's broker, drops a pile of golden Galleons on the front counter, and walks out with the tee-vee, vee-dee-o player and movie without waiting for change. It takes him longer than he'd like to admit to plug it all in and get it working, but once he has the film running, he pays desperate attention to what, _exactly_ , it is that makes a difference.

He briefly considers suiciding his way through it, but since he doesn't know if that would break the spell and leave the world worse off for its lack of Malfoy, he figures that's one cue he won't take from Phil the Insufferable.

But as he watches Phil fall in love with all of the little things about Rita—which by definition excludes the teeth and hair—Draco realizes he's going to have to learn those same things about Potter. He's going to have to know the man, inside and out, in order to make him fall in love with Draco in a day.

If there's one thing that Draco is good at, though, it's research.

* * *

The next morning, he gets up as usual, but takes extra time dressing. He finds the shirt he knows sets his eyes off the best, makes sure to wear the trousers that are just a bit too small for him but make his arse look like it's carved from marble, and finds his black greatcoat in his front closet. It's a bit too warm for the weather, but he knows it billows in a particularly satisfying way, and he is, after all, looking to make an impression.

He strides into the Ministry, but rather than heading straight for the Archives and Research Department, he takes a detour through the Auror's Department. It's not exactly the most direct route, but it is in the right direction. If anyone looks at him with suspicion in their eyes, it's quickly replaced by the glaze of lust because today, wizards and witches, Draco Malfoy looks edible.

When Potter sees him, he freezes. He's holding a piece of paperwork in his hand, and it slips from his fingers to flutter onto the floor. Draco walks up to him, raises an eyebrow, and then squats down to pick it up. It puts him eye level with Potter's crotch, and as he fights to keep his cocky smile on his face (rather than the stupidly lust-filled leer that wants to break free), he rises slowly to his feet and hands the sheet of paper back to Potter.

"Drop something?" he says, waiting for Potter to do something.

He blinks.

Blinks again.

"Potter."

"What? Oh, sorry." He fumbles for the paper and drops it again. Draco sighs and goes to pick it up, but Potter does the same thing, so they bang their heads together with a loud crack that echoes through the room.

"Fuck!" Draco reels back, eyes watering, while Potter crumples to the floor, eyes closed.

"Potter?" Draco pokes at him with his toe. "Harry?"

When the man doesn't move, Draco curses, casts a healing charm, and waits for the ensuing chaos like a man standing on the deck of a ship about to sink.

* * *

From that point on (and after a heavy dose of headache potion), his every thought and action is focused solely on figuring out what Harry Potter likes. Draco learns that his slightly-too-small trousers make Potter's brain shut off—an incredibly flattering and exciting, but wholly unhelpful, piece of information—and that he takes his tea with two sugars, no milk. Potter is relatively unorganized, but not in such a way as to be useless. He's congenial to his coworkers, kind to victims, and an unmitigated arsehole to Draco if given the chance, which Draco does his best not to do.

He spends a week catching Potter first thing in the morning, steaming cup of tea in Draco's hand. It ends up in the bin(once), forgotten on Potter's desk (thrice), spilled on Draco (twice, though he wore a shirt he wasn't as fond of the second time), and, finally, given to Weasley, who asks if it's poisoned before downing the whole, scalding thing. Draco gets some small satisfaction when Weasley has to cast a healing charm on his tongue after, but since the damn thing had been intended for Potter in the first place, he's more annoyed than anything else.

He learns Potter's favorite local restaurants and what he orders from each of them. He learns that Harry is primarily right-handed, but sometimes uses his left. He prefers dark chocolate to milk, which is a pleasant surprise, and hates nougat, which is an absolute tragedy.

Draco manages to convince Potter to get a drink with him once—and no resulting visit to jail this time—and learns that while he drinks beer, he doesn't seem to have much of a preference for what kind.

"Just whatever's on special," Potter says with an artless shrug before taking a sip from his foaming glass. "I'm not picky."

But he is. He won't eat peas, mushy or otherwise. He cannot have his back to a door. His wand is always holstered on his right thigh, the leather so well-cared for, it gleams, even under the muted Ministry lights. He gets cold easily and sometimes puts on a pair of fingerless gloves by midday to help keep warm. (Draco is not charmed by this. Not at all.)

And he loves without reservation and without shame. He tells Granger he loves her whenever she stops by his desk (about every day in three). He tells Weasley he loves him, though it makes the redhead blush and stammer and hit Potter either on the shoulder or the head, depending on the day. He approaches his work with a dogged determination and focus that shows Draco he loves it, too, even with all of the paperwork.

It's galling, in the worst way, to sit and watch, over and over again, how Potter loves those around him, but to not be touched by it himself. Draco can't believe it at first, but he finds himself jealous of how simple Potter makes it look.

Love has never been an easy thing for Draco. He's been taught from a young age that softer emotions like love aren't fit for polite company and are barely fit for private moments. And though he loves his parents with his whole heart—yes, even his bastard of a father, and wouldn't a Mind Wizard just love to dig their grubby little fingers into that piece of information—it's twisted up with all of the pain and death that that love brought about. For him, love is a hard rock lodged in his chest, so hot, it's searing. Something that he's desperate for, but unable to touch.

But for Potter, love is the warmth of a cozy fire after a long, cold walk home. It's a soft blanket wrapped around shoulders by a gentle hand. It's tea first thing in the morning, sunlight streaming in through open windows in spring, the smell of grass after rain. It's light and easy and endless, and by God, Draco finds himself desperately wanting some of it for his own.

He's getting ready for yet another March 14th, his tie half-done—he's picked the light gray silk, hoping it'll draw attention to his eyes without making Potter stop functioning—when he opens his refrigerator for the milk he occasionally enjoys in his tea.

It's the smell that he notices first. Putrid and sickly sweet, it's a smell he hasn't encountered since the War. 

The scent of rancid decay. Of death.

Gagging as it flows over him in a thick, invisible miasma, he presses the back of his hand to his mouth, eyes wide.

There's a thick layer of black mold covering the previously pristine interior of the fridge. Each of the shelves is covered in a dark, indistinct mass that may have been food at one point in time. The few paper or plastic containers that had been in there stand like lone sentinels among the rot. Dark red liquid drips onto the bottom shelf, so much like blood that he takes a stumbling step back. It's as if his fridge has been left alone and undisturbed for months, rather than refreshed the day before.

He remembers Granger's thoughts on the spell, about the lingering signs of time the loop might leave behind, and thinks, maybe, this is one.

The rest of the day is spent cleaning up the mess. Part of him wonders, as he's elbow deep in rotten tomatoes and rancid eggs, vanishing everything he can find and casting scouring charms after, if it'll all be back again tomorrow, if this is now part of his torture within the spell. But the stink of it is too much for him to ignore, and there's a frantic beat to his pulse that won't let him leave it be. It's nearly two when he finishes, and though he hasn't eaten at all today, he has no appetite. There's an owl knocking at his window, but the rapping is distant and easily ignored. He's probably in trouble with his boss for skiving off, but he doesn't care. He's got bigger problems than one unexcused absence, especially one that won't be on his record when he wakes up tomorrow.

When he gets up the next morning, he rushes to the kitchen and flings open the fridge. Everything is pristine. His food is whole and appetizing, the tomatoes round and full and glistening. The eggs, nestled in their cardboard package, look innocuous and normal. His hand shakes as he takes the milk out and pours it, spilling some onto the counter instead of into his tea cup.

Then he dumps the whole steaming thing into the sink and fills the delicate porcelain to the top with whiskey instead.

He shows up on Granger's doorstep still in his pajamas thirteen incredibly inebriated hours later, the empty bottle clutched in his hand with his wand in his other. It takes her a rather long time to answer the door, considering how heavily Draco is pounding on it.

"Malfoy?" she asks, eyes wide as she takes in his disheveled state. "Oh my God, what's happened? Are you hurt?"

"No," he snarls before falling his way through the door. Granger tries to catch him, but he presses the empty bottle into her hands instead. "I'm out of whiskey, Granger. Fix it."

"I don't… Ron!"

Draco groans. "Don't bring Weasley into this. He's never helpful."

"Ron is not—Malfoy, what are you _doing_?"

He turns from where he's kneeling on the floor on his hands and knees, digging through a low storage cabinet that looks like it should hold alcohol but seems to only be filled with useless, non-alcoholic books. "I told you, I'm out of whiskey."

"That's a bookshelf, you twat. Get up."

"Malfoy?" Ron turns around a corner, blue eyes wide. "What in the hell is going on?"

"I have no idea. He's smashed."

"I am not," Draco says, nose raised with dignity. "Malfoys are known for holding their booze."

He hiccups. But with _dignity_.

"Right," Ron says warily. "What are you doing in my house?"

"I'm not in _your_ house. I'm in _Granger's_ house." He staggers to his feet. "And she is going to help me fix this."

"The whiskey problem?" she asks, hesitant.

"No! The ruddy time loop!" He pauses. "But also the whiskey."

Ron turns to Hermione, concerned confusion written across his dumb, freckled face. "How much has he had to drink?"

"Not enough," Draco mutters, and he totters his way into the kitchen.

Granger comes hurrying after him and only convinces him to sit at their small table after promising to bring him more booze. Full tumbler resting on the table and caged by his fingers, he sets his lips on the glass and leans into it, eyes closed while Granger and Weasley hiss quietly at each other from outside the kitchen.

"I can hear you!" he yells unhelpfully, then grins when the whispers grow more heated.

"Okay," Granger says, pulling up a chair across from Draco with a far too serious expression. "What is this about a time loop?"

"You need a drink," he says instead of answering. Thankfully, Weasley seems to have beaten him to the punch as he sits down next to Granger, two glasses of amber liquid in his hands. He passes one to Granger, then glares at Draco.

"Time loop, Malfoy," Granger tries again. "If you'd please."

"It's all Bill Murray's fault," he says. "He started this. Him and that damn rodent."

Hermione frowns, and then the light clicks on.

"Are you talking about _Groundhog Day_?"

"I love that movie," Ron adds. "Why do you know about that movie?"

Draco waves at Hermione. "She made me watch it."

"I did?" Hermione pauses, then takes a long drink. She gasps when she finishes, then leans forward again. "Are you saying you're stuck in _Groundhog Day_?"

"What if there is no tomorrow? There wasn't one today."

"Merlin."

He's fuzzy on the details—not his fault, he's been drinking since six—but he eventually gets Weasley and Granger up to speed.

"So, you think Justin Finch-Fletchley cursed you into an infinite time loop unless you get Harry to fall in love with you?" Ron asks.

"It sounds stupid when you say it all out like that, but yes."

"I don't remember Justin being that good at charms," Hermione starts, and Draco groans, cutting her off.

"That's what you said last time. Please, try to be original, Granger."

"Well, I'm sorry. This is my first time round, as far as I'm concerned."

"That's all well and good," Ron says, bringing their attention back to him, "but if you've been reliving this day for, what, a month already?" At Draco's nod, he continues. "If you've been reliving March 14th for a month, what made you come here today?"

Draco thinks of his fridge, the rot hiding beneath the fresh, inviting flesh of the tomatoes, and takes a drink.

"It's not working," he finally says. "I've tried everything I can think of, but nothing is changing, it's just getting worse. And I think the spell is starting to fray."

"What do you mean?" Granger asks.

"There are signs that it's not working. Things decaying, as if they've been left for a long time. I'm… concerned about what it might mean for the world at large, if I don't resolve the spell the way it was intended for me to."

Ron laughs, though it's not funny. "And that's by getting Harry to fall in love with you?"

"Yes."

"Ain't gonna happen, mate."

"I'm very aware of that," Draco snaps. "Which is why I'm here. I think I'm missing something."

They sit in silence for a long moment before Hermione downs her drink.

"I had a baby brother," she says, apropos of nothing, "who died when he was just a few hours old."

"What?" Ron asks, horrified. "You've never said anything…"

"I don't," she says, mouth a firm, unhappy line. "But if Draco's going to convince me that he's in a time loop quickly, he needs to know."

Merlin, he feels like his chest is caving in. Tentatively, he reaches forward to take her hand, white-knuckled and pressed flat to the tabletop, in his.

"Thank you," he says quietly. He squeezes her fingers, and she clings back, an invisible tremble hidden in her skin.

"We're friends," she says, as if it's a natural thing, like the sun rising in the east or gravity. As if he should already know. "Now, let's figure out how to break this spell without destroying reality, shall we?"

He passes out on their floor, Hermione—and she's Hermione now, dammit, no longer Granger—sprawled out against Weasley, both of them asleep on the couch, the coffee table covered in parchment and books.

The time loop isn't kind enough to leave him without a hangover the next day, and he's not quite sure if that's another sign of the spell failing around him or a sign that drinking a bottle and a half of Firewhiskey by yourself is a terrible, terrible idea. Either way, he drags through his morning routine, eyes half-lidded and Hangover Potion conspicuously absent, feeling as if he's swimming through flobberworm mucus.

He flops into the chair next to Potter's desk, then steals his tea.

"What do you think you're doing, Malfoy?" Potter shouts, outraged. "That's mine!"

"There's more in the kitchen," Draco says before taking a long, slow sip. It's too sweet, but he powers through it, desperate for the caffeine and warmth (and not the lingering taste of Potter's mouth on the rim of the cup). "You can get another."

"But I _had_ one already," Potter starts. He glares. "What do you want?"

"I'm going to follow you today," he says. "And no, you can't ask me any questions."

"That doesn't make… Why are you following me?"

"That's a question," he says, then takes another sip.

Potter glares at him. "Why are you following me."

"Changing your intonation will not work. That is still a question."

Fuming, Potter stands, hand near his wand, green eyes bright with barely repressed annoyance. He stares down at Draco, who's honestly too hungover to care, then storms off towards the kitchen. With a groan, Draco stands and trails after, the half-finished tea clutched in his hand.

He's learned so much about Potter over the past month and a half that Draco shouldn't be so surprised at how _dull_ the man's daily routine is. Potter gets another cup of tea—Draco replaces his, mouth still tacky with too much sugar—and then settles down at his desk until lunchtime. He goes through paperwork, takes notes, only glancing up occasionally to glare at Draco. At lunch, he gets fish and chips—he gets fish and chips a _lot_ ; Draco doesn't want to think about the state of the man's arteries—and doesn't share.

The afternoon is more of the same, and Draco takes the opportunity to really _look_ at Potter. He sips his tea and considers the line of Potter's jaw, the graceful way it curves into the corded muscles of his neck. Tries to catalogue the exact shade of his eyes. Too deep to be bottle green, too rich to be jade. Maybe warm spring grass after a storm, clouds still looming above, though the rain has stopped falling. The messy flop of his dark, curling hair. The way it tangles and twists around his ears and the arms of his glasses. The scar on his forehead, faded with age but still dull and pink against his darker skin.

Maybe it's the hangover, though even that's faded by now, but Draco basks in Potter's presence, soaking him up like sun. But even with all the basking and the sunlight and the yearning, it's damned dull, and he's out of tea.

Not wanting to leave Potter alone—Draco doesn't know why he hasn't tried spending the whole day with the man before now—he looks across the cluttered top of Potter's desk for possible entertainment, then finds his eyes caught by an ornate wooden box half-hidden under a stack of papers. Frowning, he reaches for it, but Potter's fingers bracket his wrist before Draco can pick it up.

"Leave it, Malfoy," Potter says, eyes still locked on his paperwork, quill still moving in his other hand.

"I just wanted a look." Draco tries not to feel Potter's fingers on his skin like silk and flame. "I wasn't going to damage it."

"It's a gift. Leave it."

"Just a peek?" He flashes his most charming smile, the one he knows makes Potter's eyes linger on his lips. And yes, there they go, dipping for a brief second before leaping back to Draco's eyes.

"Will you leave me alone if I let you look?"

No.

"Of course."

Potter sighs and releases Draco's arm. "Then, all right. But if you break it…"

"If I break it," Draco says, already cradling the box in his hands, "I will get it repaired."

It fits comfortably in the cupped bowl of both of his hands, and the weight is solid and comforting. The lid is an intricate checkerboard pattern. While the light color is the same across the top, the contrasting wood is different hues: four quadrants of pale ash, golden oak, ruddy cherry, and dark mahogany. In the very center is a star, made up of all the different colors on the lid, unifying the design while adding a whimsical touch. The sides are made up of two types of wood. Maple, he thinks, with a band of stained oak in between. He can hardly see where the marquetry is joined, it's crafted so precisely. When Draco presses his fingers against the darker portion, he feels a groove. With a little pressure, the box shifts and slides. Instead of a solid whole, it's three layers, constructed in such a way that each band can rotate around a central, hidden spoke.

Delighted, he turns to Potter. "Is it a puzzle box?"

"Yeah," Potter says, mouth quirking up almost against his will at Draco's excitement. "I've got a bit of it figured out, actually. If you press on that dark bit, it starts to give a little, but there's something else that needs to happen before it'll release. You can feel it catch, if you're gentle."

Draco presses against the dark ring again, and as it shifts, he feels a gentle hitch in the motion. As he turns the box onto its side, pressing again, he feels something on the lid give slightly.

"Might be gravity activated," he says quietly. "I think if I just…"

He puts his pinky against the lid, while using his thumb to rotate the center of the box. As the center moves, he puts more pressure against the lid, and with a quiet sound like a breath exhaled, the whole thing rotates, opening like a flower, the differently colored sections of the lid spreading out and open, the middle turning until it's at right angles with the lid.

"Are you kidding me?" Potter shouts, grabbing the box from Draco's stunned hands. "I've had this thing for _months,_ and you get it on your first try?"

Draco opens his mouth to respond, watching as Harry flips the now unlocked lid up to peer into the box. He squints, but then his eyes grow wide and terrified, and a black ooze overflows the edges of the box.

It seeps and seethes from the container. Slow and undulating, it clings to Potter's hand when he pulls away, and it slowly crawls up his arm with dozens of small, grasping fingers.

"Malfoy!" Potter yells, already pulling his wand. "Get help!"

He doesn't have to tell Draco twice. Nearly falling from his chair, he starts yelling for other Aurors while Potter casts _Finite Incantatum_ and _Reverte_ and _Offero._ As Potter goes through a litany of counter-spells and counter-curses, Draco dodges around the confused and stunned people in the department, screaming for Weasley.

When he catches a glimpse of bright-red hair running towards him, Draco turns around and hurries back to Potter. The dark creature is wrapped around his neck like a noose, its thick, shapeless body reaching up around the curve of his chin and towards his mouth.

Draco reaches for the creature, trying to tear it from Potter's skin, but it's as if his fingers can't touch it. Instead, they go through the vile thing's skin and body until he's cupping Potter's too-warm face in his hand instead.

Mouth now covered, Potter's green eyes wide with silent screams, he stares at Draco until they're covered, too, and he's collapsing to the floor, Draco's hand falling away.

He staggers back. The creature flows into Potter's body, disappearing into his mouth and eyes and nose and ears until there's no sign of it. Still unconscious and sprawled on the floor, Potter's chest rises and falls with slow, even breaths. But when Draco falls to his knees next to the man, screaming his name and shaking his limp body, there's no change. Potter keeps breathing, in and out and easy, but his eyes stay closed, mouth slightly open.

Weasley pulls Draco away, and as he stumbles to his feet, unable to look away from Potter, he starts speaking.

"Hermione… I need to see Hermione."

"Not now," Weasley shouts. He feels at Potter's neck and sags when he finds a pulse. "Someone, call St. Mungo's. And you"—he turns, pointing at Draco—"you're coming with."

Hours later, he's still trying to explain to Weasley what happened. The box, the creature that crawled out of it, how he couldn't touch it. His voice is shaking, his whole body is shaking, and he nearly jumps out of his chair when Hermione places a gentle hand on his shoulder.

"Malfoy," she says softly. "You were asking for me?"

"Your brother," he gasps.

"What?"

"I'm in a time loop. You had a brother."

Her face pales, but she looks at him with a seriousness that makes a wave of relief wash over him.

"What do you need?"

* * *

He thinks it'll be easy. After all, the box has been on Potter's desk for months, and he hasn't managed to open it yet. But when Draco tries to take it, Potter immediately throws him out of the Auror Department and bans him from entering. He waits outside, nauseous and anxious, and right around 5:40 PM, the yelling starts, and he knows it's too late.

The next time, he tries vanishing the box, but something about it reflects his spell, and he ends up vanishing the right sleeve of his dress shirt instead. Potter immediately notices, and though he seems appreciative of the way Draco's muscles tense and shift, he still snatches the box from where it's sitting on his desk and tucks it away in a drawer. Draco feels a flare of relief, but as Harry starts to close it, that dark _thing_ starts crawling out, and it's the same horrific moment all over again.

Draco even tries explaining the situation to Potter, but he laughs it off in a way that has Draco nearly hexing the man right there, in the middle of the Auror Department of the British Ministry of Magic, surrounded by all of the highest ranking law enforcement wizards in the nation. Instead, he grits his teeth, then watches in numb horror as Potter picks up the box, tosses it into the air, and then fails to catch it. It lands on the ground with a heavy crack, and then the darkness starts seeping out, and Draco wishes he'd hexed the man after all.

It happens over and over again, no matter what he does. He manages to steal the box once and throws it into the blazing fireplace in the Archives, but the flames don't touch the wood, only turning a bright, achy purple. He tries to open it when Potter isn't around, but the creature doesn't erupt from it until The Boy Who Really Needs To Stay The Hell Away shows up. Every day for two weeks, Draco watches as the evil thing nestled inside that beautiful box oozes out and puts Potter into a coma that no one at St. Mungo's understands or can bring him out of.

And every morning, Draco wakes up in his bed, knowing he'll have to go through it all again.

He _really_ hates March 14th.

* * *

His only refuge is the records room underneath the Ministry. From 6:40 AM until 5:35 PM, he goes through every stack, every bookshelf, looking for more information about the creature. He drags Hermione down with him after lunch almost daily, and together, they get through a huge amount of worthless information. She never gets bored of it because, for her, it's the first time, every time. But Draco can tell it's wearing on him, the endless drudgery of reading and cross-reference and annotation. There's no way for him to keep record of what he's read and what he hasn't, so he's created a mental system that makes it easier for him to remember. But it's all in his head, and it's all jumbled together, and when he finds himself reading the same book three days in a row, he throws it from him in a fit of pique that he's happy no one else can see. It's infuriating, and it's soul-numbing, and it's the most important thing he's ever done. 

He's not stuck here to make Potter love him. He's here to save his life.

* * *

"Who gave you that thing, anyway?" Draco asks Potter, keeping a wary eye on the box as they discuss it. Though he's been going through this now for at least a month, it rarely opens before 5:40 PM. Still, with Potter's track record, Draco's not entirely convinced the man can't make it open if he only thinks about it hard enough.

"I don't remember, actually." Potter has the good grace to look embarrassed at the admission. "It was sent to me by a friend of someone I saved during the Battle of Hogwarts. But…" He trails off, shoots Draco a guilty look. "You remember how it was. Hard to keep track of who was saving who, really."

As all Draco clearly remembers is getting punched in the face, a lot of screaming, and watching the Dark Lord fall, he can't disagree.

Still, he persists. "No identifying characteristics?"

"It was delivered."

"No note?"

"Threw it out, I think, or it's at home."

He keeps reminding himself that he has to _save_ the man, not put him in the ground himself.

"And you got it in November?"

Potter frowns. "Yeah. I don't remember telling you that, though."

Damnit, everything is blurring together. "You did. What was going on in November that someone would send you a present?"

"I don't know, Malfoy," he says, his familiar can-you-shut-up-about-the-damned-box-already expression brewing. "People send me presents. I've got a whole room at Grimmauld full of the things."

"You what?"

He shrugs, embarrassed. "Saviour of the Wizarding World and all. People want to say thank you."

"Mind if I have a look?"

* * *

Potter lets him into 12 Grimmauld Place, and Draco barely has time to snark about the shabby state of the house before he's ushered into a side room filled to the top with unopened boxes and packages.

"Salazar's tits, Potter," Draco says. "You could throw them out, you know."

"I'd feel guilty," he mumbles, already backing out of the room. "I've got to get back to the Ministry. Kreacher'll show you out when you're ready to go. Don't break anything."

"You tell me that everytime I get near your things." Draco checks his watch, notes that he's got four hours before the box opens, and nods. "Get going. I'll see you back at the Ministry."

"Yeah…" Potter hesitates in the doorway. "I still don't understand why you need to look at my post."

"Archives business," he says, waving him away. "Documenting the post-War period. Maintaining the historical record."

"Right, right." He taps the doorknob with his fingers. "I'll see you back at the Ministry, then?"

"Yes, thank you."

Draco stops waiting for Potter to leave and dives into the mess. The Wizarding post system is a rather convoluted mess of a bureaucratic institution, but they at least bother to put the date on packages when they're processed. He moves piles and towers of boxes, checking for the date on a handful of them as he goes. Eventually, he finds November, 2000, and starts the excavation there.

He finds the letter buried under a pile of packages, which were under another pile of packages, which were covered with unopened post. After he gets this thing figured out, he's going to have to talk to Potter about his correspondence. Whatever the case, the letter is opened, unlike many of the others, and immediately references the box.

 _Harry_ —which is so friendly considering the contents of the writer's "gift," it nearly makes Draco _Incendio_ the thing before he can read it— _I wanted to send you this as a thank you. If it hadn't been for you, my friend would have died that day at Hogwarts. Without you, I wouldn't be able to see her every day, alive and healthy. I don't know how to thank you for keeping her with me. This is only a small way to show my gratitude._

_Sincerely,_

_Fay Dunbar_

Draco curses, then stuffs the letter into his jacket.

"Kreacher!" he shouts before hurrying from the room. Checking his watch, he sees he's got an hour and a half left. "I'm leaving!"

He doesn't wait for the elf to show him out, instead hurrying through the front door and down the steps until he can Apparate to the Ministry. He hates the twenty minutes it takes him to hunt Hermione down, explain the time loop and the box, and get her sequestered in one of the conference rooms in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures.

"A time loop?" Her face is still pale, eyes wide. "I can barely believe it, Malfoy, I mean…"

"That's not important right now," he says. "Look at this."

He hands her the letter and watches her read it in silence. When she finishes, she sets it on the table and slides it back to him.

"Fay was a friend at Hogwarts. There's no way she'd send Harry something cursed."

"But she did!" Draco says, shaking the letter at Hermione. "This is clearly a threat!"

"It's not, Malfoy. That's just what a thank you note looks like."

He stabs at the page. "This is not a thank you note. This is a warning. We have to find her and figure out how to stop it."

"Draco."

She's never used his first name. Not in the almost three months he's been stuck in the loop, not in the year they've been somewhat friendly, not in the year before that when they were just bumping into each other in the Archives. He's never been Draco before, and his pulse stutters in his veins at his name on her lips, said with care and simple affection.

"What's this really about?"

"It's about stopping this curse from killing Potter," he says. His heart is racing now. He glances at his watch. There's only an hour left. An hour to find Dunbar and get the answer from her. An hour to stop Potter from falling nearly lifeless at his feet.

"And nothing else?"

"I can't"—he's gasping for breath, throat tight—"I can't see it happen again. I can't watch that… that _thing_ crawl into him and destroy everything that makes Potter _Potter_. It's too much, Hermione. It's awful, and it never stops. I can never stop it. And he's… He's too important. There are too many people depending on him. Too many people need him, and I have to stop it, I have to save him."

She places a hand over his shaking, white-knuckled fist. "Do you love him?"

No. Absolutely not. Never in a million years, a million lifetimes. Draco isn't meant to love someone like Potter. He isn't meant to have any of that soft, easy light in his life. He is Malfoy and Death Eater and alone, and Harry Potter is not meant for him.

"Yes."

She squeezes his hand gently, loosens his grip so she can slide her fingers through his, and they sit there for a long minute, clinging to each other as Draco fights for his usual, detached composure.

"We have to find her," he finally says.

She squeezes his hand one more time. "Of course."

It's easier said than done. There aren't any records at the Ministry of where Dunbar lives, and by the time they've realized there's no address for her, it's 5:35 PM and Draco has to get to the second floor.

He tries contacting Hogwarts the next day to see if they have any record of where she lives, but the Floo-Call goes weird as soon as he makes it. The flames are the color of overcooked spinach, a limp and dirty green that has him falling back from them in surprise. On the other side, McGonagall's face is indistinct, her voice breaking in and out with the crackle of fire.

"Headmistress?" he says, leaning towards the sickly fire. "Can you hear me?"

"Don't kno… ppening, Mr. Mal… ave to make it st...e can tel… o you, and un… thing, we… agical disas… portions."

"I need to speak to Fay Dunbar. Her address, I need her address!"

"We've tri… gure it out, bu… we're all cou… Mr. Malfoy."

The flames roar for a second, then gutter out almost as quickly. The room smells like ash and burnt flesh, and he hates that he recognizes the scent.

He hurries to the Ministry, noting the rusted iron fence outside his apartment and the dead tree at the Apparation point. The pavements of Whitehall are smooth and even, but the street is cracked and crumbling. He stumbles, but stays focused.

The copy of the Hogwarts Student List kept in the Archives and Research Department starts falling apart as soon as Draco opens it. Cursing, he turns the pages with care, wincing when the parchment comes away under his fingers. It's slow and arduous, but he goes from 900 to 1991. And there, nestled near the top of his class list, is Fay Dunbar.

And her address.

He scribbles it onto a piece of parchment, then hurries from the basement. He's never heard of it before—Applecross sounds like some sort of breakfast pastry, not a place—so he can't Apparate, but he steals Potter's Firebolt and goes racing towards Scotland.

The sky is clear and blue, the air warm around him as he flies. But the further away from London he gets, the worse the weather becomes. Everything turns a dull, lifeless grey, and fog rolls in thick and impenetrable. Draco loses all sense of motion, unable to tell if he's still moving. There's no wind against his face, no change in equilibrium when he dives or soars ever higher. Just that blank, unending mist.

He turns around, or at least he thinks he does. As the air clears around him, the sky going blue again, he knows he's not going to be able to fly to Scotland. 

And then it's 5:35 again, and he's watching that awful, awful thing crawl into Potter and turn him into a living, breathing shell.

* * *

It's dark in St. Mungo's. He could've gone home hours ago. Hermione had encouraged him to. She'd pressed her hand against his shoulder, gentle and kind and painful. Wordlessly, he'd shrugged her touch away. Weasley, his broad frame silhouetted by the hallway lights, had taken her home around midnight, leaving Draco in the dark with Potter and the low lights of monitoring spells.

Around two, he stumbles from Harry's— _Potter's_ —room for a cup of tea. A nurse in light blue robes points him in the direction of a small alcove with an Always Ready kettle and a basket of generic tea bags. He makes a cup, puts in two sugars and no milk before he realizes what he's doing, and has to fight back a scream. Instead, he takes a too-sweet sip and turns to head back to Potter's bedside.

That's how he finds her. Her hair is shorter than it had been at school, and it's lost some of its shine. Her eyes are shadowed and sharp, her clothes clinging to her figure as if desperate not to fall off. They sag like her shoulders, gravity seemingly weighing more heavily on her than anyone else in the world.

"You." He chokes it out.

"Malfoy?" Her eyes widen. "Why are you here?"

"You did this to him," he snarls. The paper cup in his hand crumples as he makes a fist, the hot tea scalding his hand, though he's too numb with anger to notice. "You put him here."

Those sharp eyes sparkle. "He finally opened it."

"I should kill you. I should put you in the ground, right here, right now."

"You'd be doing me a favour, then, and I don't think you were ever the type of person to help their enemies." She grins, hard and brittle. "Though I might be wrong, if you're here for him."

"You don't know anything, Dunbar."

She sighs. "I know you're not going to kill me. Put your wand away. I need to say goodbye."

He hadn't realized he'd pulled it out, but now he refuses to put it away. Dunbar rolls her eyes, then turns and walks from the alcove. Draco hurries after her, his heart pounding at the thought of losing her, and they both walk down the hall, past Harry's room, and into a long term care suite.

The curtains are pulled back, and the lights of London come through the window, soft and cold. There's a worn chair in the corner, a book sitting next to it on a low table. A door off to the side leads to what Draco assumes is a bathroom, and in the center of the room is a bed.

It looks so much like Harry's, he freezes in the doorway. But Dunbar keeps walking, sets her hand on the thin arm peeking from the blankets and covered in tubes and monitors.

"Hey," she says softly, a smile ghosting her lips. "I'm going to have to leave, but I promise I'll be back as soon as I can. It's a bit shit of me to leave like this on your birthday, but I won't be gone long."

The figure in the bed doesn't reply. Her eyes are slightly open, but Draco can see the white sclera behind her lashes. Her hair is long—too long, if he's to be honest—but clearly well cared for. It falls in waves over her shoulders, lustrous and somehow obscene with how healthy it looks compared to the pale and thin body it grows from.

"What…"

Dunbar doesn't look at him when she responds. "It happened at the Battle. Killing Curse gone wrong, I think. I haven't been able to figure it out, not in all this time. She's just been… gone, but still here, ever since. The Healers don't know how to help." She laughs, sharp like broken stone. "They keep telling me she'll wake up one day. We just have to wait."

She leans over and presses a kiss to the girl's forehead, lingering with the touch. Her eyes still closed, she pulls away.

Draco can't tell what he's feeling. The anger is still there, thick and caustic in his stomach. But hard on its heels is grief and understanding. He lost people in the War, but at least they were _gone_ , not wasted and shattered remains of themselves. He had closure with Vince's death. There hadn't been the crutch of hope. And as awful as his death had been, at least it had been done with and over.

"I have to take you to the Ministry." He swallows. "Come with me."

"You won't be able to save him," she says. "There's no counter-curse, I made sure of that."

"It doesn't matter," he says. "I'll find one."

She laughs. "It'll take you years. Decades."

"Then I'd better get started."

"Why do you even care?" She's crying now. "You hate him."

"I should ask you the same question. You were his friend."

Turning back to the bed, her eyes wild, she says, "He did this to her. He dragged us into his battle, convinced us that Dumbledore's Army was something worth fighting in, worth fighting for. He _lied_ , and now, she's as good as dead. It would've been better if she _had_ died that day, instead of this."

"You don't know that. There's still a chance—"

"I've been here every day for three years, and nothing. There's no chance. She's never waking up, and it's his fault."

Draco goes to grab her. That's what he means to do, at least. But instead, he pulls the crying girl into his arms and lets her sob on his shoulder until, finally, they leave together and go to the Ministry. He falls asleep in the hallway outside the holding cells, already thinking of ways to convince the Mediwizards to let him help Harry. And to maybe help Dunbar's friend as well.

* * *

He wakes up the next day in his bed, and he screams.

* * *

He walks into the Archives, stares at the rows and rows of books, and wonders if he'll be able to complete his search before the spell collapses around him. His office looks awful. His beloved desk is listing to one side now, two of its legs broken. The papers lying around the room are molding and rotten. Leather covers are stained and cracked. _A Thorough Classification of the Practical Applications of Monkshood_ is somehow still pristine, so he flips through its pages with the sense of reaching further than his body can go, but somehow still touching it.

 _Known colloquially as wolfsbane,_ aconitum napellus _has a long history of use for repelling werewolves. Also a major component in the wolfsbane potion, it is a much sought after herb for treatment of the disease. However,_ a. napellus _is also effective for use on humans. It's one of the primary ingredients for the Wideye Potion, which is used to revive those who have been dosed with the Draught of Living Death, and can be used in combination with other ingredients to help counter the_ Somnus Magnus _curse._

Staring at the page, Draco starts to laugh so hard, he cries.

* * *

Of course the idiot girl used the first major sleeping curse she could find. It's nickname is the Sleeping Beauty curse, for Salazar's sake. Like he wouldn't have found it immediately. Like _Hermione_ wouldn't have figured it out within seconds, once she knew the trick of it. Dunbar's estimation of Potter's friends and their intelligence is shocking.

She was, however, correct in saying that it didn't have a counter-curse. It had a counter-curse _and_ a counter-potion. He might've missed that bit if it hadn't been for _A Thorough Classification_. The spell books he'd found hadn't gone into any detail about the required potion, but _A Thorough Classification_ did, tucked into one of its many appendices.

Draco has to stop himself from cackling as he brews, especially when he places three sprigs of wolfsbane into the boiling cauldron and stirs for a count of ten. The resulting potion smells like lavender and honey, flows like a mist into its vial, and is a light blue color like the sky in winter. It's slightly cold to the touch, which is off-putting, but Draco places it into one of the pockets of his robes where he can no longer feel its icy touch.

He spends the day with Harry. He brings him tea and lunch, helps him organize his desk. Has answers to all of his information requests, even though he doesn't have the paperwork with him.

"You're being awfully nice," Harry says, eyeing the fifth fresh cup of tea that Draco's brought to his desk.

"I'm a nice person."

Harry laughs. "Not really."

"No, not really. But I can be if I want."

"And you want to be."

"Yes."

"To me."

"Yes, Potter. Is that so strange?"

"I mean, yes? Clearly. I don't think I've said more than five words to you since you started working here."

"Which sounds like a problem with _you_ , not with me."

Harry flushes. "I guess." When Draco reaches for the box, Harry grabs his arm, just like the first time. "Hey, careful now. Don't break it."

"You _always_ say that," Draco says. "Why do you think I'm always going to break your things? We're not children anymore. I'm not going to damage your toys out of spite."

"When do I say that?" His fingers are resting on Draco's pulse point like a caress. "We never talk."

"I talk to you all the time, Potter. It's not my fault you don't remember."

Harry flushes and pulls his hand away, his skin trailing a line of fire across Draco's skin.

"I… Sorry. For not paying attention, I guess."

"It's okay," Draco says, and he means it. "It's not your fault."

"It's getting late, Malfoy. Why don't we head out, grab a bite or something?"

Draco raises his eyebrow. This is new. "You mean dinner?"

"Yeah," Harry says, though his eyes dart away and his flush grows a deeper red. "And maybe drinks."

The other eyebrow joins the first, both nearly nestled in Draco's hairline. "And drinks."

"You know what," Harry says, grabbing the box, "never mind. Forget I said anything, it was stupid, and I…"

The middle section of the box starts to twist, and Draco frantically looks at his watch. 5:40 PM, on the dot.

“Potter," Draco says, snapping the man's attention back to him and not on the black creature already creeping from the box. "You never listen to anything I say. The only thing more atrocious than your handwriting is your table manners. You’ve worn the same outfit _every day,_ and I _know_ you own other shirts, which means you’ve planned out your wardrobe for the week. You're an adult, that's insane, and we're going to work on it. You also need your glasses resized. 

"You also smell like heaven and I want to drown in it. You are the last thing I think about when I go to sleep, and the first thing I think of when I wake. I hate that I love you this much, you complete fucking idiot. Now, sit down, don’t move, and let me save you.”

“.... I.... Okay?”

Draco winces. "This is going to be rather unpleasant, I'm afraid, but it won't last long."

"What?" Harry says, but then the creature is covering his mouth, and his eyes widen.

"Trust me," Draco says calmly, already reaching for the potion and his wand. "I promise I'll explain everything when you wake up."

Harry, eyes nearly covered, stares at Draco. The moment drags on, the curse blocking out more and more of that startling, undefinable green, until Harry jerks his head in a nod, then sits still and silent as the curse slithers into his body and he falls unconscious.

Easing him to the floor, Draco pushes the chair back and kneels next to him. The potion flows through Harry's mouth, rushing into his body as he inhales. Slowly, his skin starts to glow, and his lips turn a deep red. Draco murmurs the _Somnus Terminus_ spell and watches as it settles around Harry's body in a shimmering veil. Then, leaning forward, Draco kisses him.

It is the Sleeping Beauty Curse, after all, and while it's not true love's kiss, it is a required step in the counter-curse.

He's absolutely not going to enjoy it.

He tries not to think when Harry's mouth starts to move beneath his. At first, it's a gasp, a deep inhalation as consciousness returns to his body. Draco goes to pull away, but then Harry's hands are in Draco's hair and pulling him closer, and he's not going _anywhere._

That is, of course, how Draco and Harry both end up sitting in front of Head Auror Robards, his face a vicious red, as he chews them out about "professional decorum" and "interdepartmental fraternization" and "making a scene in the middle of the bloody Ministry." But Harry keeps tapping his foot against Draco's where they rest, side by side, on the floor, and Draco finds that he doesn't care in the slightest.

Thirty minutes later, he and Harry are standing on the pavement outside of the Ministry building. Draco notes with worry that the deterioration is worse. There are roof tiles littering the ground and the grass overgrown and choked with weeds. Harry doesn't seem to notice, though. He only has eyes for Draco.

"So," he says, green eyes bright. "Dinner and drinks?"

"Or maybe just drinks?" Draco smiles. "Which I happen to have at my flat."

Might as well go for broke. He's either cracked it and everything will be fine tomorrow—he's never been so ready for March 15th in his life—or this will be his only chance to maybe shag Harry Potter.

Harry takes a step closer. "Or maybe just your flat?"

He Side-Alongs Harry as they're kissing, and it's wild and dangerous, and his heart is beating so fast, he can hear it in his ears. They fall up the stairs to his flat, banging into the walls of the hallway as they go, Draco uncertain whether he or Harry is trying to pin the other along the way. A door opens down the hall, there's a woman's affronted yelp, but then they're spilling through his unlocked door and landing hard against the couch, and Draco can't be bothered to spare a thought for his neighbor.

"Been driving me mad." Harry kisses Draco hard enough to bruise. "All damn day, with those legs and your _hands_. It's fucking criminal."

Draco silently makes a note to come back to _that_ bit of information later, but then Harry's got his hands buried in the back of Draco's trousers and there are more important things to be worried about.

They somehow make it to the bedroom. The mattress bounces slightly as Draco lands on it, and the predatory gleam in Harry's eyes as he starts to undo his shirt makes Draco shiver.

Draco tries to be sexy about undressing, but he's desperate and botches the job entirely. One of his sleeves gets stuck around his wrist, so his shirt is flopping about as if glued to his skin with a sticking charm. Harry laughs and climbs on top of Draco, pressing him into the bed and undoing the cuff with nimble fingers. As he draws the shirt away, Harry trails his lips down Draco's jaw and neck, pressing a kiss in the small dip of his clavicle.

"You're ridiculous." He whispers the words into Draco's skin, then drifts lower to lick a stripe over one of his nipples. Draco arches into it, his hands flying to Harry's head and threading through his hair. He moans when Draco's hands tighten, and then Harry's drifting lower, lower, lower…

All of reality could collapse around him in this exact moment, broken and decayed and turned to dust, and Draco Malfoy would not notice. Because Harry Potter, Saviour of the Wizarding World, is opening Draco's trousers with his _teeth_ , and then it's all wet warmth and lips and tongue, and oh God, this is going to be embarrassingly quick.

Harry licks a stripe up the underside of Draco's cock, then grins at Draco from under his lashes before wrapping his lips around the head. Harry's eyes close as he moans, and Draco can feel the vibration in his dick. His hips arch from the bed and he grabs onto Harry's hair like a lifeline. Harry groans again, then sets to ruining Draco's life with his mouth.

Draco sees stars when he comes, and he thinks he might pull out some of Harry's hair. He winces at the thought, gentling his touch as he fights for breath.

"Sorry." He cradles Harry's head, pulls him up. "Sorry."

Harry kisses him, deep and dirty, so that Draco can taste himself on Harry's tongue. If Draco hadn't just come, he'd do it again from the flavour.

"Don't apologize," Harry says, laughing. "I liked it."

"I'll show you something to like." It sounds dumb, but he doesn't care. He rolls Harry onto his back, then helps the man wiggle out of his trousers. He's not wearing any pants—what kind of Auror _does_ that?—and they both groan as Draco wraps his fingers around Harry's cock. Draco lazily jerks him, kissing him throughout, and wants to crow as Harry's body bucks and writhes under his touch. Trailing his lips from Harry's mouth, along the curve of his jaw and neck, inching his way down, Draco figures he'll repay the favor. Desperate for a taste of Harry, Draco's caught off-guard when the man curses and comes all over Draco's hand and his own stomach.

"Fuck," Harry gasps, his body still spasming, as Draco lays across his thighs, smug smile covering his face. "You're gonna kill me."

"Pretty sure I just prevented your death," Draco says before licking his hand clean.

"Oh Merlin." Harry's eyes are wide and watchful, his glasses askew as he stares at Draco's fingers disappearing into his mouth. "No, _now_ you're going to kill me. Fuck, that's hot."

Draco laughs and crawls up the bed to lay down in the crook of Harry's arm. He pulls Draco closer, tucking him into the curve of his body, dropping a satisfied kiss to Draco's mouth, and humming in pleasure.

"Speaking of killing me." Harry trails his fingers through Draco's hair. "You want to explain what happened?"

Draco groans and sits up. "Do you have time to run out to a pawnshop with me?"

"What?"

* * *

"Potter, I told you, that's not the right conversion rate for Galleons to pounds. With the way the Muggle markets are behaving, there's no knowing how far it's going to fall. Merlin, they aren't even sure _why_ the market's dropping the way it is. Haven't you been paying attention at all to what the Bank of England is doing with the rates these days?"

"Draco. You're stuck in a time loop."

"I'm glad you've been paying attention to what I'm saying this time."

Draco carries the TV while Harry holds the video player and the video.

"For how long?" Harry asks, looking down at Bill Murray's smiling face.

"Somewhere between two to four months. It's getting harder to tell the longer I'm in it, honestly."

"Godric, that's awful. And this"—he tips his head toward the movie—"will explain it to me?"

"More or less. You could ask Hermione, but I don't think she'd appreciate us snogging on her couch partway through her lecture."

Harry flushes but grins. "She'd probably be fine with it. It's Ron you need to worry about."

"Oh hell. I never thought about how I'd tell Weasley. He's going to _hate_ this."

"You don't have to look so pleased about that."

Draco rather thinks he does.

* * *

They sit together on the couch, thighs touching, to watch _Groundhog Day._ Draco does his best not to doze, but it's been a long day, and he's exhausted from relief and sex. Harry's body is a warm line against his, and he leans into it, basking. Harry slides his arm around Draco's shoulder, pulls him closer, threads his fingers through Draco's hair with a soothing regularity that has him helpless in its comfort. His eyes droop once, twice, and then he's asleep before he can tell himself he can't, that he has to linger in this moment for as long as he can, so he won't wake up tomorrow morning, alone and lonely, again and again.

* * *

He wakes up in his bed, and he fights against the rising swell of disappointment and, maybe, grief that floods him. It's still dark out, which means it's time for him to start trying to save Harry's life. It's difficult to find the energy to get up, though. He closes his eyes, hiding in the darkness there. He doesn't want to face it again, if saving Harry wasn't the key to things. And, he thinks with a pang, he doesn't want to see a Harry that doesn't know the feel of Draco's hands on his skin, that doesn't want him back.

He'll get up in a minute, he tells himself. He's going to enjoy this moment, this brief heartbeat of time before he's fully awake, where he can linger in the remembered feel of Harry pressed against him, warm and easy.

But he's a Malfoy, and Malfoy's don't wallow. He groans, not ready to but going to get up anyway. And though he's sprawled out across his bed like usual, he realizes with a start that something is, blessedly, different.

Draco opens one eye. Harry is lying on his back, tucked under Draco's arm and leg. His hand is resting on Draco's thigh, and his face is turned into the crook of Draco's shoulder. With his glasses on the bedside table, Draco sees the gentle sweep of Harry's eyelashes with startling clarity. They're long and graceful, curled like a brush stroke against canvas.

"You're staring."

Draco is wildly satisfied when he doesn't jump. "Yes, I am."

Harry blinks at him, beautiful and real and _here._ He frowns slightly, still muzzy from sleep. "Did it happen? Did you loop again?" 

Draco kisses Harry instead of answering.

* * *

At lunch the next day—and it _is_ the next day, he's got the _Diei Ostendere_ to prove it—Luna peeks her head into his office again. Her headwear today is a poorly knit red, orange, and yellow beanie with uneven ear flaps.

Draco cuts her off. "I do not want to go to the pub. I have a date."

"That's wonderful," Luna beams at him, "but I actually wanted to let you know that Justin Finch-Fletchley is here to see you."

"Of _course_ he is," Draco says, a manic glee filling him. "Please, show him in."

Justin walks in, hands in his pockets, cocky grin on his face. "Hullo, Malfoy."

"Hello, Justin." Draco stands. "Oh, Luna? If you could close the door, please?"

Justin's grin dies quickly.

"Absolutely! Have fun, you two!"

"You, my friend," Draco says, rounding his desk and approaching Justin, "have exactly five seconds to explain what in the bloody hell you were thinking before I call my Auror boyfriend down here to arrest you."

"Wait, what?" Justin lurches back.

"You cursed me into a time loop, one that wouldn't break until I stopped _another_ curse from putting the Saviour of the Wizard World into a bloody magical coma. I don't know why you would have conspired with Dunbar on that one, but I'm sure the DMLE would _love_ to talk to the both of you about it."

"I didn't… What's Fay got to do with anything? You were just supposed to… It was a prank!"

"A prank that nearly brought all of magical space-time crashing down around us, you newt for brains. What would've happened if I hadn't done it, hm? What was your plan for that?"

"First, we've all known that Harry's had a thing for you since the sixth year. And _second_ "—Justin's back is against the door, his hand flapping uselessly at the knob as his voice continues to rise—"you could've used the failsafe!".

"The what?"

"The failsafe," Justin squeaks. "It was on the back of the note."

Draco pins the man with his stare, then slowly walks backwards to his desk. He opens one of the side drawers and pulls out a small piece of parchment, one he'd located that morning when he arrived at work.

_Draco, thought I'd drop by and say hello. Guess I'll catch you another time. Perhaps the 15th? Justin._

As he turns it over, he sees more writing, words that had been hidden by the thickness of the parchment.

_P.S. If you get stuck, just say 'Justin Finch-Fletchley is the greatest wizard I've ever known and I'd be lucky to lick his Muggleborn boots.' to get out of it. Have fun!_

The paper bursts into flames in his hand, and Justin's out the door without a word.

* * *

**One Year Later**

* * *

"Draco, I swear"—Harry is shouldering the door to Grimmauld Place open, his arm filled with groceries—"you're overreacting. It's not going to happen again. Justin's apologized a hundred times already, and he's promised to never cast the spell again."

"I don't care." Draco slams the door behind him. "If I'm going to be stuck in another loop, I'm going to be prepared."

"Which is why I told you to practice your lubrication spells." Harry winks at him. "I'll be in on it this time, right? Might as well have some fun."

"Get your head out of the gutter, Potter," Draco says, though he doesn't mean it. "I'm a respectable young wizard. I deserve to be treated with dignity and respect."

"I'd be happy to respect you all over the back of the couch later." Harry darts in to kiss Draco's gaping mouth. "Now, help me get these things put up."

Grimmauld Place looks entirely different than it did a year ago. The dark, dingy state of things has softened, as if responding to Harry's growing happiness. It's a subtle, but reaffirming sign, that Draco's been doing things right.

He still knows what Harry's favorite restaurants are, but now, Draco knows his own favorite dishes there, too. He leaves dark chocolate hidden in cabinets and cupboards for when Harry gets a craving. When Draco gets up, still at 5:30 AM every weekday, he makes Harry a cup of tea with two sugars and leaves it on the nightstand by their bed, stasis charm in place so it doesn't grow cold when Harry finally gets up around seven.

He's learned new things, too. He knows that Harry likes to bottom as often as he likes to top, and that Draco will take the man however he can have him. He knows how Harry kisses, how he makes love. Knows what his touch is like when it's frantic and heated, when it's slow and full of warmth. He knows what it feels like to wake up, tangled around Harry like Devil's Snare, and he knows that Harry loves every claustrophobic second of it.

He knows the feel of the fire flaring to life when he comes home late in November. He has a favorite blanket, one that Harry bought for him for his birthday, that lives draped over the back of the couch in the front room. There's the smell of the garden after rain easing through the kitchen window, a light and easy thing like early morning. It's Harry's favorite time of year, when those spring rains seem to freshen the world around them, and he can wrap Draco up in his arms and stare out at the garden, waiting for the flowers to bloom.

"You going to help, you posh bastard, or do I need to come get you?" Harry shouts from the kitchen.

Smiling as he follows Harry's voice, Draco thinks that, maybe, even if the loop did start again, he wouldn't notice. After all, even though some days he still can't believe it, is still surprised by it, sometimes wakes up wondering if it's all been a dream, Harry Potter loves him.

He honestly should send Bill Murray flowers.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm such a massive fan of _Groundhog Day_ , when the opportunity showed up to write a fic inspired by it, I couldn't resist. It was so much fun, and I sincerely hope that you enjoyed reading it.
> 
> ***
> 
> This work is part of "Lights, Camera, Drarry" (LCDrarry), a film-, TV- and theatre-inspired Drarry fest.  
>  The creators will be revealed on [tumblr](http://lcdrarry.tumblr.com) and [AO3](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/LCDrarry2020/works) on 15 June 2020.
> 
> Please show your appreciation to the creator with kudos and comments :)


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